


Episteme

by Aloice



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-26 14:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13237776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloice/pseuds/Aloice
Summary: Knowledge, to androids, is just as addictive as love.





	Episteme

**Author's Note:**

  * For [androidkisser](https://archiveofourown.org/users/androidkisser/gifts).



> Written for the NieR Automata writer's discord 2017 Secret Santa.  
>  ~~now I ship it send help~~  
>  Thanks go to tumblr user imagiverse and [spheri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spheri) again for all their help!

Human homozygous twins were close, the archives said, because they had been together since conception: they shared the same placenta, the same space in the womb, the same mother’s blood and oxygenated air. In your mind, you shared arguably even more with Devola: the same fate of the observers, the same prosecution by your fellow androids, the same guilt that simply refused to go away. The only thing Devola would do that you wouldn’t would probably be the consumption of all the booze. The only thing you would do that Devola wouldn’t would probably be…

Their footsteps slowed, and then came to a stop. The white-haired boy smiled up at Anemone with all the warmth of lilacs from a dead land. His pose was relaxed, his tone eager. A kind of innocent hope radiated off his skin, reminding you suddenly of glowing lunar tears and the fleeting beauty of youth long buried under miles of dirt and machine grease. “Are you the Resistance leader? My name is YoRHa unit 9S, and this is YoRHa unit 2B. We’re here to provide support.”

 _9S… a scanner unit._ You continued to fiddle with the parts in your hands, careful not to reveal yourself. While the twin models usually operated from the shadows under jeers and insults, YoRHa units were elite soldiers with their own space base. They were unlikely to require your help.

“The moose sure were grumpy today, weren’t they, 2B? They wouldn’t even take us a whole mile before just throwing us off.”

“9S, focus on the task at hand.”

“But that means we can’t ride them to the next mission!”

“We will go on foot. The location is not too far away.”

“You know, you’re just a little too serious sometimes, 2B!”

 _He probably has some feelings for her,_ you thought to yourself, smiling. The idea was strangely comforting. You imagined them sitting together under a pillar or tree the way you and Devola would occasionally rest, humming to each other softly as you calibrated each other’s controls and gently traced each other’s bodies for signs of damage. _They are perfect for one another. Now if only –_

The thought was interrupted by a growl. You grabbed the filter from your work table and ran towards the source of the sound, away from the daydream of android love.

The materials supplier accepted the repaired filter with another deep-throated grunt, turning around without so much as acknowledging your existence. By the time you returned to the front, the YoRHa androids were gone. You turned towards Devola, masking disappointment with forced relief. “He didn’t curse at me at all – perhaps we can finally work in peace now?”

“Don’t get your hopes up, sis. I’m sure we’ll hear some more choice words from them tomorrow.”

Life went on. More parts were collected, circuits repaired, vulgarities endured. It was all a bit of a haze, a continuously drifting shipwreck anchored only by Devola’s constant presence and steady signal pulse. The war with the machines went on, a steady dark background noise to the real war that had already been lost millennia ago, and you turned with the androids on the surface like responsible cogs in a grand machine, laboring without maintenance simply to be less reviled. There was no light of redemption for either of you, not really, except…

That YoRHa scanner.

Even though you’d never admit it to Devola, you really wanted to hear more of his voice and petty complaints.

 

He was radiant: even when he was simply standing idly listening to conversations or running calculations, he always looked happy to be alive, a fact that you, as a defective model that should never have been more than a prototype, could only look on with envy. It was in the way that his features – even behind that visor – would swell up with such pride whenever YoRHa or humanity were mentioned, the way he would subconsciously adapt a protective stance whenever someone dangerous approached his superior, and the way he always babbled on and on about whatever new thing about the machines he had learned that day; he was full of purpose and hope, and those were the exact things that had long lost meaning for you. While Devola slurred some incoherent thing or two in her corner, you often strained to catch the scanner’s conversations, getting helplessly drunk on his compassion and optimism. A few impassioned words, you’d found, could accelerate your processors just as efficiently as the booze would accelerate your sister’s.

“You know that poor YoRHa boy?” Devola asked one day carelessly, sorting things into crates. You almost froze right then and there.

“That scanner YoRHa boy? Neither he nor his partner has talked to either of us.”

“Oh, his partner’s the same all right, but he’s not the same anymore.” Devola stated, squinting under the sun as she cast her gaze upon the cheerful android in the center of the camp. “Can’t you tell? A complete reboot. His partner’s introducing the two of them again.”

You hadn’t been able to tell, because to you, he had sounded exactly the same. The eagerness… the slightest hints of impatience… the carefree love and yearning. Perhaps he had even been just a touch sweeter, a touch more forlorn when his partner cut him off mid-sentence to inquire after some units in the desert.

… Or was that just your imagination?

 

_Proposal: assist this pod in retrieving unit 9S._

“I’m coming! Devola!” You packed logic virus vaccines and spare parts in a frenzy, the rush of power vibrating violently from ear to ear as you cried out for your sister and nearly knocked down the pod from its precarious position in the mid-air. _Not him. Anyone but him_. “We’ve got a YoRHa survivor to pick up!”

The ground was still shaking. Alien, cold white spikes continued to shoot out of the Earth, tearing apart stone, tree roots and android corpses. You didn’t care. The two of you were picking up speed, and Devola had locked her right hand with your left. With Devola you could fix anything. And you’d be damned if you couldn’t fix the one thing other than Devola herself that could still make you smile.

Two weeks would pass before he’d so much as twitch.

 

You were convinced that there was something uniquely _human_ in his features; looking down at him – pretending, for your sake as much as Devola’s, that he was just any other android – you felt like you could see every wave of fragility, every tell-tale bubble of unprocessed pain. A strange rhythm sang from his black box, unorthodox for an android but unsettlingly reminiscent of the heartbeats of relapsing human children. 9S had a human boy’s long lashes, sensitive nose, and inquisitiveness; he had always wanted to understand and to grow. And to see all of that cut short, not only repeatedly, but so cruelly –

_Is this even worse than… what had happened back then?_

“Devola, do you know what the structure at the center of the ruins is?” Vague gesturing.

“The gigantic white thing? I’ve heard it’s some kind of tower. The machines are up to something. Why do you ask?”

“… Do you think… when he wakes up… he would want to try to fight whatever’s in it?”

Devola’s eyes did not reveal any emotion or information. “Do you plan to stop him?”

“I don’t know. But I think we’ll need to make a decision. And soon.”

 

Although you knew 9S’ world had already been shattered before his awakening, you still reeled to see him descend into darkness. What had been the clear sky of his eyes became clouded, filled with grief and hatred; optimism turned to cynicism, and love to hurt and rage. He still came back to you and Devola when he needed treatment – his pod had decreed it and put its programs down – yet it was almost as if a completely different android had stepped into the fray. The metallic sheen of his weapon and the velvety felt of his uniform had become tainted by blood and filth, and you could sense instabilities in his hacking and logic circuits, the connection lines quivering as if they could snap at any moment. His core temperature would climb, his black box threatening to overheat and flare; it was almost as if he was absorbing hate and despair from everything he had fought, a runaway escalation of the rage of loss. Often you felt a need to protect Devola from him, even as you knew his bloodlust and anger was reserved only for the murderers of his partner. The 9S after 2B’s death had been forced to look for a different meaning, and –

_What if there just were none?_

You laughed quietly to yourself, remembering your own grief, your own rage, the overwhelming windfall of meaninglessness as the foundations of Project Gestalt dissolved under the twin models’ faulty programming. There was a reason why you had long ceased to drink even as Devola clutched the bottle in her sleep and reprogramming – you didn’t ever want your sister to see you turn to something like this, something dark, something different, something _almost_ _unrecognizable_ –

_Your motor cortex is full of holes…_

How could you tell him that everything was going to be okay when nothing had been okay for the twin models – or the world – for thousands of years? How could you tell him not to throw himself mindlessly into the carnage when a small part of you longed to do the same, if it could so much as bring back a shadow of what you promised to eternally guard?

He looked down, looked away, looked _through_. You could but feel for him.

His smile came back to you, full like a flower and unmarred by death or war. You wanted him to find his meaning. You needed him to find a meaning – any kind of meaning – for what yet remained in this crapsack world ruined by you and your sister.

_Hey, 9S? I need you to promise me something…_

He grimaced, his head still turned resolutely towards south, towards truth and a mission he would not return from. Your desperation fell from your lips like a stream.

_Don’t die alone._

 

A world from forever ago: a large, spacious room lit by sunlight spilling in from tilted windows, stacks upon stacks of books, pale hanging chandeliers chasing away shadow or sorrow. In a world of lies you sat, keeper of humanity’s greatest desires and fears, protector of its histories and souls. Devola spun webs of music outside of the house, perpetuating the myth that all could still live, a lonely pair of androids fighting desperately to make sure the human knowledge and love that had first brought them into the world would not disappear into the deep.

_Aren’t humans wonderful, Devola?_

She had nodded.

_Can’t we save them, Devola?_

She had squeezed your hand.

_Won’t we miss them, Devola?_

A lone delivery ship had sailed towards the moon.

9S’ face, so much like that of a human child yet so utterly distorted in a kind of android-machine hybrid monstrosity, accusing you, accusing her:

_Why did you fail?_

_Why are you here now, watching passively over the cinders of humanity stamped on by machine weapons and stained by android blood?_

_Why didn’t you leave us with something to believe once we’ve lost what we love, knowing that no matter what we say, every single one of us is destined to die alone?_

As an android scanner, he had once been so fascinated by the smallest piece of random human archives.

_Just imagine him with an old-world book._

 

The tower announcer’s voice echoed through the empty fields of the city ruins, the waves in phase with the flailing of the small stubby’s arms. You picked up the small gears and tree sap from the debris field, counting the required parts and then also your slowing heartbeats. It’d be hard to write goodbye to Devola. It’d be devastating, even, just to greet 9S, knowing that it would be for the last time, and you wouldn’t even have the courage to –

“Going already, Popola?”

You sighed, rising, dropping the sword onto the ground. A dull sound from where she stood; she had done the same. You ran to embrace her and bury your head on her shoulder. Gratitude and sinking dread swirled together in your chest like a sick choke, intermingling and leaking out where tears had long run dry. Your sister clung desperately to you, a frame built from bleak saccharine understanding and dry static. “I can’t hide anything from you, can I, Devola?”

“I wasn’t going to let you die alone, either,” your twin whispered, coarse. “You get that?”

“How long had you known?”

“Come on. Nobody’s asked us for any repairs requiring a desert rose for the last three years, and you used to gush about human romance novels.” The only thing better than the electricity searing through your cheeks was the fierce focus in your sister’s eyes as your identical irises found their match. “I have to say, it does look gorgeous in your hair.”

“Devola, you _said_ –”

“I know, I know, I told you someone wanted it, but I also knew you just wanted to distract him so he wouldn’t head straight to the Tower. But now we’ve used up that extra time with each other.” She let go to pick up the swords, placed yours back in your hands as if you were to march to war. Under the sun, her blazing hair looked like valor and the martyrdom of fresh wounds. “Together?”

_I’ll only be a martyr if it’s with her._

“Until the very end.”

 

The heart of city ruins had collapsed in a crater before rising in a tower. Just like you and Devola, it had been the epicenter of too many hard truths. The machines had finally piled their resources together, created something powerful enough to shoot down the server on the moon. The tower hivemind spoke with a high-pitched human voice, taunting the scanner with false promise.

9S fought… alone. He was a black dot with an even smaller black shadow in a world of inorganic sepia and uncaring white, a singular lifeform swimming for land in the center of an infertile water world, slicing through circuitry and motor with nothing to watch his back and nothing to answer his prayers. His IFF and NFCS were deteriorating again, probably at risk for failing for good if he wouldn’t stop to get maintenance in the next few hours. His soul, though…

A part of you longed to reach for him, to put it all on pause, to live and to reminisce. But time – knowledge – truth – the end – they all wait for no one. And if the Devola and Popola models of another time had committed the ultimate sin attempting to keep the truth enclosed…

_What can we do but to lead you to that cursed light?_

The sword sang in your hands, a rising hymn. All around the machines fell, dead dreams to reach for a humanity that you had long ago let slip through. They kept coming, swinging axes and swords, screams in the air and single-minded death in their eyes not unlike the human warfare of old. This had been happening for the last several thousand years. This would always continue to happen unless someone would find an answer. The unending cycle of conflict and death that started with the Black Scrawl and would not end until your deaths…

_9S…_

Devola danced between a quadruped and a gunner, sending a biped flying through the air. You were almost invincible, in synchronicity – it was how you had endured and survived. _Just because we play medic and no one can see our wounds do not mean they are not there. Just because we put flowers in our hair do not mean we cannot cut and raze_. Machine screams and bullets penetrate through your being, reverberate through time; even if there are no humans left to fight for – even if there may be nothing left to worship –

_Those that want to seek humanity for their own ends… must die._

“Devola and I – we have to atone for our sins no matter what!”

9S was tossed mercilessly from the main Tower door, grimacing as he tried to stand back up. Your heart hang suspended from a half dozen valves.

“What happened?”

“It’s the barrier…”

There was no more time; there was only the monochrome concentric circular signs, the barriers viciously assaulting through your systems and erasing all your memories, your rage and pain shrieking out of phase as they tore through every resistor of your system and spiraled your self-consciousness out of control. You threw yourself coil and screw at a wall, desire and regret your strongest battling rams; if all the souls of the gestalts and all the wounds of the replicants would break this wall, break this impasse of meaninglessness, break you, break the callous uncaringness of this world –

The spheres of the barrier heard you; they had never met something akin to this kind of madness, so they fell over in charred black.

_Devola!_

_“I hope you… don’t regret this…”_

A flash of elaborate embroidery and silver hair. The last thing you saw. The last thing you’d know.

_His soul…_

_9S…_

And you cracked, because all roads to the sun were paved with the sacrifice of Icarus.

 

 

The lovingly bound ancient book left unread in the resistance camp, covered by desert rose petals and flipped open to one illuminated page:

**Episteme**

n.

A philosophical term derived from Ancient Greek ἐπιστήμη, which can refer to knowledge, science or understanding, and which comes from the verb ἐπίσταμαι, meaning "to know, to understand.”


End file.
